Ohio CPS News Archive

Ohio News Coverage

Home-schooled students in Clark and Champaign counties have new opportunities to participate in sports and other activities in their home district thanks to a new state law.

But some local public school leaders have questions about how it might be Incorporated into their current policies and what the law, which technically takes effect Sept. 29, means for fall sports, which begin several weeks before that.

A state lawmaker in Ohio hopes to provide a tax break to property owners who homeschool their children instead of sending them to public school.

Sen. Kris Jordan of Ostrander in central Ohio says that his bill would reduce property taxes for parents who homeschool their children by an amount equal to what they pay for school levies in their local school districts. Jordan also says that the legislation would help those who sacrifice to homeschool a child.

My Health Wealth Team has joined forces with an organic food supplement company located in Westerville, Ohio. My Health Wealth Team is an international organization led by Tom Gruber.

The company vision is to provide the highest quality nutritional products at affordable prices while offering a viable business opportunity that allows part time marketers to earn a full time income and full time marketers to earn a substantial residual income.

Can police officers trick automobile drivers with bogus traffic stops? Cops in a small Ohio town seem to think so, and now they're under attack for trying to sweep the city of drugs using a creative little loophole.

The Mayfield Heights, Ohio Police Department is under fire after the city recently decided to establish a "drug checkpoint" on Interstate 271. Randomly stopping cars and combing them for contraband is illegal, though, so law enforcement has been using the next best thing: fake checkpoints.

Parents of homeschooled children will pay less in property taxes if a novel bill passes in Ohio. Senate Bill 127, which would become effective in 2014, would give homeschoolers a tax credit equal to the proportion of property taxes on their home.

Homeschool families and leaders have mixed thoughts about the proposal. Ohioans for Educational Freedom supports tax credits "since home educating families pay, unfairly, for public education in their property taxes," said Mark Stevenson, the organization's founder and director.

BUCYRUS - It's National Child Abuse Prevention Month but Crawford County Children Services is focused on preventing child abuse all year round.

"People have the misconception that we want to take their children, that we are baby snatchers, and that could not be further from the truth. We offer help to parents who need it with the goal of them being able to keep their children," said Linda Zellner, director of Crawford County Job and Family Services.

Few employees have to be on the move as much as a government case worker in a county child protective or family services office. Unfortunately, many of these offices still use physical files that require the worker to return to the office.

In an effort to keep its employees' heads above the sea of paperwork and allow them to spend more time actually working on their cases, Fairfield County is turning to a mobility solution. Northwoods' Compass CoPilot suite seemed a logical choice -- and not just because the company is headquartered in the next county over (in Dublin, Ohio). The tablet app suite helps workers use their time most efficiently, by keeping notes, dictation recordings and photos all in one place and tagged by case.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is trying to help fix a part of the state's child welfare system that is broken: foster care. Too many young people get shuffled constantly from home to home, guardian to guardian, parents to foster care and back again.

They are denied stability. Some children are reunited too soon with parents who were not yet ready to be parents again. The commission held eight public hearings across the state over the course of a year. Its recommendations include: -- Creating a central registry of medical records for children in foster care. -- Inviting children in foster care to attend their court hearings when they are of an appropriate age. -- Narrowing the state's Planned Permanent Living Arrangements law, which requires foster parents to reunify children with their birth parents. The report calls for "legislation to limit the permanent living arrangement to those who are truly in a permanent living arrangement."

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine released recommendations Monday from his Foster Care Advisory Group to encourage positive changes and focus on the safety and well-being of children in the foster care system.

The group convened in December to recommend solutions to issues raised at DeWine's Child Safety Summits held in eight cities throughout the state. DeWine held the summits and a day-long Foster Youth Symposium last year to discuss issues related to child safety and foster care.

Ohio should reduce the number of times a child enters and exits the foster care system and give foster parents more input into court proceedings involving children in their care, according to a set of recommendations by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.

The system governing court-appointed lawyers who look out for foster children's interests should be improved, mentoring for foster children should be boosted and the system should allow foster children to participate in basic childhood activities - such as sleepovers at friends' houses - that are currently prohibited, according to recommendations by the Ohio Foster Care Advisory Group. The state should create a central medical registry to allow doctors access to a child's medical records regardless where they are in the system.

A 64-year-old Independence man has been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography, and officials have called a meeting tonight for parents whose children may have had contact with him.

Authorities say Johnston was a foster parent and also was active in a Boy Scout troop or camp. Officials do not know which troop Johnston was involved in. At the meeting representatives from the NKY Children's Advocacy Center will talk to parents about how to approach their children about the possibility of inappropriate contact with Johnston.

Ohio's reliance on local funds to provide child welfare services ranging from adoption to child abuse investigations creates inequity that a coalition of county children services agencies hopes to solve with a $70 million infusion of state dollars.

The Public Children Services Association of Ohio, a coalition of the state's 88 child welfare agencies, asked members of the Ohio House of Representative's Finance Committee this past week for an additional $70 million in the next two-year budget to fairly finance child welfare services. State dollars equal 10 percent of all child welfare funding - one of the lowest percentages in the country.

IMA - Despite $1.7 million in cutbacks since 2007, Allen County Children Services has been able to handle an increasing number of child abuse and neglect reports, according to a 2012 Annual Report released Wednesday.

"We knew when the economy was starting to falter, people were starting to lose jobs, we knew to expect an increase," Ferris said. "We didn't know how much, but an increase was coming. So as we had openings developing in the agencies, that had reduced funding; we had been able to restructure accordingly so that we didn't see any decrease in front-level program staff."

Abused or neglected teenage girls become teen mothers at nearly five times the national rate of teen motherhood. the journal Pediatrics, shows that teen childbirth rates are more than 20 percent for abused and neglected teens.

In this first ever prospective study of teen pregnancy (one that follows a group over time), Dr. Noll studied teen girls between 14 and 17, assessing them annually through the age of 19 to track their sexual activities, possible pregnancy and motherhood. About half of the teenagers in the study were recruited from child protective service agencies for having been abused or neglected within the past 12 months. The other half consisted of "comparison" teenage girls who had not experienced abuse or neglect but were similar in terms of age, income, minority status and family constellation (one- or two-parent households).

Patti Jacobs first saw it on Christmas Eve 2007. She was called into the office at Warren County Children Services, where a handful of crying small children had been taken away from their parents, who had been busted for heroin trafficking.

That marked the beginning of a surge of heroin-related cases at Warren County Children Services. "And it's gone downhill ever since. We are just inundated with these children. It's horrific," Jacobs said. In Warren County - a primarily white, upscale area - only 6 percent of the cases in 2008 referred for ongoing services were related to heroin abuse. In 2011, that figure jumped to 73 percent. That's 106 cases involving 170 children.

My late husband and I dreamed of having a farm. You know, a little piece of earth that we could pass along to the kids and they could always call home. The trouble is, we were flat broke. No, we were less than flat broke.

Nevertheless, I knew that if we worked hard and saved our money we could still make it happen. On the weekends, we couldn't really afford to do anything, so we would drive around the countryside and talk about our dreams. We wanted a big house and a yard for the kids to play in. One day we found this house, sitting in the middle of a field, empty. It was pretty big, it had a barn that was made from real logs split in two.

According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as of Tuesday, water levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron have reached their lowest levels since record-keeping began, nearly 100 years ago.

Concerns had already been raised since the end of last summer, due to a combination of last year's warm, dry La Nina winter, followed by low rainfall amounts coming into the Great Lakes region due to the drought in the United States, and a late start to the snowy weather this winter. These natural effects are possibly enhanced by climate change, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to turn the global temperature up, however there is a more direct man-made reason that contributes to the low water levels.

Guo is known for his recent work fostering relationships between China and Toledo, efforts that have already seen Chinese businessmen purchase a few hotels and homes in the Toledo area.

"As I talked to Simon and his interest in Toledo and the Maumee River, it came immediately to my mind that the Maumee is nice, but the lake is superior," Hunt said. "I told him if they liked the water so much, that Sandusky being on the lake is wonderful."

In any given month, roughly 12,000 children in Ohio are in foster care, separated from their biological parents for their protection. Fifteen percent of them spend four years or longer in foster care before they are reunited with family or are adopted.

Unfortunately, a growing number of the children, a higher percentage than the national average, reach age 18 and "age out" of the child protective system, without ever being adopted. The statistics suggest a rough transition to adulthood and independence for these young people who carry the physical and emotional baggage of family dysfunction. About 25 percent will not have earned a high school diploma at the time they can legally to be on their own. Fewer than 2 percent ever complete college. More than 50 percent will be homeless at least once; and about 30 percent of them will end up behind bars at some point.

ROCK CREEK, Ohio - After stinging election defeats for the education reform movement in Idaho, Indiana, Michigan and other states, a lot of supporters are left searching for an inspiring story to rejuvenate their spirits.

Meet Sarah Fowler. The 24-year-old former egg farmer was homeschooled her entire life by her parents in rural northeast Ohio. The humble girl-next-door recognized the state's education system needed a different kind of leadership, and mounted an amazing last-minute, 92-day campaign for a vacant seat on the state board of education.

Many people have heard of foster parenting and adoption of children through a county Children Services agency, but what is treatment foster parenting?

It's temporarily providing a home for a child who has emotional or behavioral issues, frequently brought on by abuse or neglect by their biological family. The requirements to be a treatment foster parent are: at least age 21; a strong support system to help cope with stress and crisis situations; transportation; and Ohio residency.

MANSFIELD -- One key to reducing child abuse and neglect in troubled Richland County families is to strengthen those units to overcome potential problems.

That's one of the goals for Richland County Children Services -- a measure by which the child protective agency has experienced some success. Two agency leaders will explain those successes during a presentation Oct. 24 at the annual statewide Public Children Services Association of Ohio conference in Columbus.

GREATER AKRON - Officials at Summit County Children Services (SCCS) are asking voters to renew the SCCS' existing levy for another six-year period in the Nov. 6 General Election.

The levy, according to SCCS Executive Director John Saros, provides 60 percent of the agency's operating funds. "It represents a whole host of programs that we are mandated to provide to the community, such as investigation, protective services, case management, placement, out-of-home care for children and foster and relative care, group homes, resident care - all those services we pay for," Saros said. "Beyond that, if a child is permanently legally separated from their family, we have adoption programs and independent living programs to help a child establish permanency in their lives."

ELYRIA - Rayshaun Powell, the father of three of Erica Perez's children, has filed a lawsuit against Lorain County Children Services and the caseworkers involved in his children's case, alleging that their actions put his children's lives in jeopardy.

Powell, who is currently incarcerated at Lorain Correctional Institution on a rape charge, was in jail when Perez, to whom he is married, was charged with seven counts of child endangering in July after police found her home in disarray and seven of her children dirty and neglected. Another child had been staying with relatives and was not at the home.

ELYRIA - On July 5, when police found seven children living in a filthy house in Lorain, Lorain County Children Services acted quickly - obtaining emergency custody of the children and arranging for family members to care for them.

But as details of Children Services' involvement with the mother, Erica Perez, came out - that the agency had a long history with her and a caseworker just a few months earlier had noted dismal conditions in the home in a report - the question arose: Why were the children still there?